No more teachers, no more books...

Today was the last day of classes!! It's been so long coming, yet it seems kind of surreal. We don't start clinics for another two weeks though. Next week is a course on law, ethics and practice management - technically still a class, but an 8-5 pass/fail kinda class. Trust me, it doesn't count. Same prof, same expectations, same classroom - it's not the same as having 2 hour blocks of class. Then is a week of orientation - which is "technically" our first rotation. Dr Novo is the rotation coordinator, so if he's in his usual hilarity, it's going to be kind of awesome.

This weekend is our White Coat Ceremony, where we are individually presented with white coats to signify leaving the classroom and entering clinics. My mom, dad and nana will land in about 10 minutes so that they can be here for the ceremony :) My boy is obviously coming too.

Tonight is the annual "spring pig roast". However, whoever arranged it this year did a crappy job. While the theme is Luau, and prizes will be awarded for best costume, they have failed to roast a pig. Which seems like a giant waste of a party dedicated to roasting a pig to me. Also, the powers that be have told us that it has to be alcohol free. I'm going to have to find another excuse to get drunk this weekend - think I can find one? Anyways, back to the food. They're ordering catered Italian food. Did I mention it was a little ridiculous. Italian food. At a Luau. ::sigh::

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!! NO MORE EXAMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Less than a month to go!

I had this great illusion in my head when I opened the blogger dashboard that I was going to be updating in less than a month from the last time! Then I saw that I last updated just three days short of a month ago, and realized it probably doesn't count.

We are getting so close to rotations it's ridiculous. I've really adored my classes this semester - I've been learning a lot and getting to feel a lot more like I'm ready for clinics. Last week in Critical Care we had a lab where we had 3 minutes to "deal" with each case. I got less than half of them right, but nothing (when explained) was foreign to me, or didn't make sense. Baby steps. I'm glad we have guiding clinicians with us on clinics! Also, my Emergency rotation isn't until the week that I graduate, so I have some time.

We finished Orthopedics, Nutrition, Ultrasound and Public Health. Other ones too, but I can't remember them. We're really down to just Cardiology, Critical Care (and International diseases and law/ethics/regulatory stuff).

Schedule: this week - SPRING BREAK (Pennsylvania here I come!). next week - last Cardiology and CC classes, also International Diseases only class meeting. March 25 - White Coat Ceremony! The week after that - law/ethics/regulatory stuff 8-5 every day ew. THEN ORIENTATION TO CLINICS!

Well, it feels to me like it's coming up ridiculously fast, but written out it looks a lot more reasonable and like a month away. Baby steps. We start clinics on April 9.

I'm actually kind of on top of my MPH thesis at the moment. My spring break goals are to mostly have a massive rough draft. I'm hoping to defend in May, which seems forever away right now, but will attack me sooner than I expect.

Yay for a predicted 50 degrees this morning. Boo for daylight saving time making my reasonable 745am wakeup time into a slightly slacker 845 wakeup time.

This post is degenerating, so I'm gonna call it good. And hope to update sooner rather than later.

Poke me with a stick

I've been poked. Apparently I don't post often enough. It's probably true, this blog really gives very little indication of what it's like to be in vet school. Unless you can surmise that my lack of updating means that I have a lot to do, and I don't spend my time on blogger. To be honest, I spend my time on livejournal ;-) my first and true love. :-)

This semester is kinda awesome. We have 3 week long classes that meet between 5 and 10 times. They're just long enough to get into and get a handle on, and then they end before I get bored or frustrated or overwhelmed. Most of our classes have been incredibly focused on cases, which has been amazing for sorting the masses of information in my brain. The file cabinets in my brain are getting better labeled and better organized. Information and the answers to questions is coming to the tip of my tongue faster and more easily.

I'm getting more and more excited about the fact that rotations start in April. January flew by, and it's already Valentine's Day! We're 5 weeks into a semester that's only 11 weeks long. I start rotations with Ophthalmology and Necropsy - I think they'll be good for solidifying my understanding of the hospital procedures and computer systems, and then pounding some good old pathophys into my skull. I don't expect either to be a walk in the park, but I'd rather ease in with fewer all-nighters and not have to hit the ground running.

Maybe I'll try to post again soon. Maybe I should give up on this fruitless endeavor. What will happen? Only time can tell!

I suggest wine

We had our first exam of the semester last week. I really like toxicology, and the exams are straight out of the notes/book (it helps that Dr. Murphy wrote the book). I'm so far loving the increased number of take-homes and assignments this semester over just having an exam in every single class. We have our first metabolic exam on Tuesday - but it's about 80% take-home and only 5 lectures are actually on the exam. This makes me happy and very stress-free.

I broke down and bought a large animal internal medicine book last week. I was working on a take-home and realized that I actually didn't know enough about anything large animal off the top of my head. I'm excited that the book I ended up getting (which is in the other room or I'd link it) is in outline format and pretty much can be used as a study aid for my large animal GI and multisystemic classes as well. Now that's a good book! And it was relatively inexpensive (~$50), considering it's use (and how that's how I'm planning to pass boards!).

I highly suggest wine as part of a happy and healthy junior year :-)

Why I'm tracking Small Animal

Yesterday during large animal gastrology lab:

- I put an alfalfa bolus down the throat of a cow
- I put a speculum down the throat of a cow
- I inserted a (more different kind of ) speculum into a cow's mouth
- I heard the bubbles in a cow's rumen while someone else blew into a properly placed esophageal tube
- I learned how to put a speculum into a horse's mouth
- I floated a horse's teeth
- I put a nasogastric tube in a horse.

I'm really glad I had the opportunity to do these things. But overall, this is EXACTLY why I'm tracking small animal.

Where did the summer go?

Where did the summer go, anyways? I swear it was just May... Anyways, someone's been bugging me about not posting all summer, so maybe I'll do a quick summary for y'all.

I did Summer Scholars, a program where I received a stipend to work with a professor on a research project. I chose to look at MRSA (methicillan-resistant staph aureus) in animals that live in a nursing home in Saint Paul. I'm only 8 weeks into a 10 week project right now, and this week is going awfully quickly... I think I have some serious work to do tomorrow (Friday, eep!). As part of summer scholars I got to go to a symposium in Baton Rouge, LA in August. The LSU vet school is absolutely gorgeous and pretty nifty. Our rehab room is better though :-) (Their equine ICU is absolutely amazing.)

School started this week. I'm excited about the semester, and I fell back into school like no time had passed. I'm still working on getting really "organized". My goal is to be prepared by Monday for anything they can throw at me. This involves an intricate plan of what comes home to study and what stays at school so that when they change classes at the last second I still have the notes that I need. Also, I've been biking to and from school, so I'm trying to cut down on how much stuff I haul back and forth.

We sign up for senior year rotations soon, eek! Supposedly it was supposed to be today, but the system won't let us yet, so maybe tomorrow? I think I've got things just about hashed out. I've got 4 externships planned right now: 2 weeks at the Minnesota Department of Health with Dr. Joni Scheftel, 2 weeks at the Golden Valley Humane Society spaying and neutering dogs and cats, 4 weeks in Amherst, probably splitting my time between the Amherst Animal Hospital (where I started working when I was 15 1/2!) and Dr. Margaret's new hospital in Nashua. I also have a 2 week block planned at the end of January for going to prospective employers and doing a week or so with them to make sure that I could work there for at least a year after graduation. I have a couple of vacations planned: 2 weeks in Nova Scotia, 2 weeks dedicated to playing with Seabass (my best friend) and 2 weeks around Christmas to see my family.

Two of my friends are getting married next year! Fortunately, they've carefully planned their weddings "in between" rotations (the last 2 days of rotations). I know that the boy can't make it to one of them due to a business trip, but hopefully we'll both be able to make it back to Vermont for the second one.

I've almost nearly got the rotations themselves worked out. I still have to make some pretty rough decisions (oncology vs s.a. theriogenology, and the like), but I know that I'm going to like whatever schedule I end up with! I'm actually kinda glad that I don't have to decide when each rotation is myself, because I'm going to learn different things on each rotation depending on the experience and expectations with which I enter it - and I don't think I have enough information right now to actually plan the "perfect" schedule myself.

New favorite things: Google Talk's ability to make your away message whatever your music player (iTunes!) is currently playing. Google notebook (which I can't find a link to) is awesome too!

Surgery three

I was the primary surgeon this past week. Our patient was a 6 month old male Australian Shepard crossed with a black lab. This gave the effect of a black lab puppy on the small side for his age, and with a disproportionally small head. He was ridiculously cute. Two of his littermates, one male and one female, accompanied him to be sterilized by us tentative second year vet students.

It was kinda nice to be the surgeon, much less stress than doing anesthesia, and much less need to be a jack of all trades that came with being the assistant. I could concentrate on what I needed to do, and help out as I saw necessary the rest of the time. I was a tiny bit disappointed and a tiny bit relieved when we found out that he was male. I really wanted to do a spay, but at the same time most of the skills necessary are used in both surgeries, and a neuter is faster and simpler.

I had a little difficulty getting the testicles up to my incision, a pre-scrotal approach. This has to do with the fact that they were the size of marbles and the ligament had to be partly broken down before they could be externalized because it was so short. Once I got them out I was relieved that everything looked so familiar. I knew all the anatomy and could see exactly what I wanted to do for each of my sutures. I placed two modified transfixation sutures in two crush marks made by hemostats, and tied them tight. Because things were going so well, I went ahead and did both testicles before calling over a surgeon to check my stumps. I placed two lines of sutures, one subcutaneously with a simple continuous suture, the other cutaneously with three interrupted cruciates and one simple interrupted sutures. The total incision was about 2cm long.

The entire procedure took just over an hour. I left stressing over anesthesia to my trusty anesthesiologist, and I was confident enough in my technique that I wasn't constantly checking the sutures. He got a little swollen and inflamed by the end of the week, but he wasn't messing at them, and the swelling should decrease with time.

The most entertaining quirk that all three of the siblings had was their extreme reluctance to walk, both on a leash and on asphalt. Our dog was very food motivated, so by the second day we were being pretty successful at walking him with constant treats and praise as reinforcements. I think the other groups spent a lot of time right by the door or carrying their dogs.

Oh, and his name was Fabio. We renamed him "Tag" within the first couple of minutes of having met him. He was just lacking the long curly locks that would have made the name even partly appropriate.

No more surgeries until next semester. Hope their fun! Our group will certainly be staying together, as we've been having a lot of fun and being very successful.

finals week

Finals are "over". I lived. Looking back, it's almost hard to understand why I've been so stressed for the last week. But there's an exhaustion that comes with having exam after exam after exam that is hard to shake.

Left in the semester: 2 surgery exams (lecture and lab), and surgery number 3! Also a week of Avian Core and another of Integrative medicine (and elective). I'm actually pretty excited about all of it.

I'm very glad that I've "learned" to study this year. I've found a method that consistently works and has gotten me grades that I'm thoroughally satisfied with. It's been a slow process to commit information to memory that is so different than I'm used to learning, but it's getting there.

I'm hoping that I'll be able to sort it out and file it this summer, hopefully increasing it's accessibility in future semesters!

Surgery number two!

We found out on Monday at lunch time that we'd been assigned cat number 265418 (I've written that number a lot). We went upstairs to the cat room, looked around and finally found the kitty that matched the number. A beautiful talkative purring cat. Gray tabby, long face, talkative (siamese in there somewhere maybe?). So beautful. We started doing a once-over on the kitty(we had a 1pm class, weren't supposed to play with kitty 'till 2). Very healthy cat, very prominant testicles. Which was the problem.

We aren't supposed to do cat neuters. Especially on babyish cats. It actually doesn't require sutures...

So we went and found a tech, and got assigned number 265419, his littermate. She's a girl, she's all gray, medium length hair, about 5 months old. Also very charismatic. She's adorable, has let us do just about anything to her we could need to do.

We spayed her on Tuesday morning. I was the assistant surgeon, Stacie was the anesthetist and Alina was the primary surgeon. There was a little bit of stress all around, but it went really well :-) I've never helped with a real surgery before, I didn't really know what I was doing and all that jazz, but I learned a lot. It was probably very good for me.

The surgery went well - it took almost three hours, but that's because Alina was being very very careful with her sutures. She wanted to get everything just right. The suture line looks absolutely beautiful today. There were a couple of mishaps here and there, but absolutely nothing life threatening, just things that we had to suture differently, pretty much. A couple of the things that took the longest the surgeons would have us redo. But the outcome is so nice to see that it's hard to complain.

Our only complication this week was the fact that while her temperature was 98 coming out of surgery (pretty typical), within an hour it went up to 104, and peaked at 105. She got some painkillers and some ace (which causes hypothermia, cool). She was down to 102 by 8pm, which is perfectly normal for a cat.

She's done really well for the last couple of days. Today we went to the locker room to explore and have some cuddle time. I really like her :-) She managed to not only send 2 e-mails but also log out of windows. I was rather impressed! She's going back to the humane society with her brother tomorrow, and they should be up for adoption by noon. I have no doubt that she'll go to a wonderful home and everyone who meets her will fall in love with her :-)

First surgery!

Last Monday afternoon we got to meet our surgery animals for the first time. We were assigned a funny looking little dog named Toggle. His paperwork had him down as 10-11 months old and a Cocker Spaniel/Rottweiler mix. I'd put him at closer to a year and a half and a Chow cross. He certainly had more than two breeds in him. His legs are stubby and his ears hang low on his head, but they're definately not Cocker ears. He's a pretty healthy dog overall, the only exception being the tapeworms he was diagnosed with on Wednesday (we saw a proglottid crawling out... ew).

Tuesday we neutered him. I was the anesthesiologist, Stacie was the primary surgeon and Alina was the assistant surgeon. I had a lot of firsts. First time I'd ever: put in a catheter (only took me 2 tries!), given an IM injection in a dog, intubated a dog, calculated drug doses that were actually used in a real animal, set up an anesthesia machine completely on my own, been primarily responsible for an anesthetized animal, and monitored an animal for a complete surgery. I finally understand a lot of the concepts that we've only talked about. Turns out anesthesia is a VERY hands-on thing. The amount of adreneline that I had in my body was a little bit crazy. I can see why people that like the "rush" would go into anesthesiology as a specialty. The neuter went well, though I admit that I wasn't involved in it hardly at all. I was a tiny bit distracted by the dog that seemed to miraculously be maintaining constant heart and respiratory rates, despite the fact that 1.5% of the air that he was breathing was trying to kill him!

We all had our "duh" moments during the surgery though. The head surgeon dude came up to me while we were just starting and told me that my mask was on backwards. Whoops! I went into prep and changed it. Alina scratched her nose without thinking about it and had to reglove to become sterile again. And halfway through closing the skin incision Stacie realized that she had absolutely no idea how to bury her suture knots. So that was also kinda funny. Everything worked out really well though, and our group has gotten GREAT comments from the instructors - we like that! We got made fun of a lot while actually doing the surgery - we're a very charistmatic group, we were closest to the in/out door, and we were one of the first groups to go for the day. But all of the comments written on the stuff that we have to turn in have been really positive, unlike some people who are getting half-page replies from the professors on how they've messed up!

Toggle did doing very well after surgery. He wore an e-collar until Thursday morning, because when we gave him a couple of hours on Wednesday without it he rewarded us by messing with his incision. As I said above, he's got tapeworms (but an otherwise clear fecal sample!). Tapeworms are best diagnosed by direct visualization - we saw 'em wiggling... The only complication from surgery that he had was some scrotal swelling, probably from some bleeding. Also, the body's not a huge fan of empty pockets, so it tends to fill it with "stuff". Because he was a more mature dog, his scrotum was pretty well developed and he had a fair amount of space to fill once they were gone.

We're were charge of Toggle until he went back to the Humane Society on Friday, and he was probably up for adoption on Saturday morning! The rest of the week was mostly walking him, monitoring his incision and giving him his pain meds.

Next week I'm the assistant surgeon! Probably on a cat spay, but who knows! We'll find out Monday! (I'm not at *all* excited about this, can't you tell!)